Roman Beekeeping: Part 11

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

Now the king-bees are slightly larger and more oblong in shape than the other bees, with straighter legs but less ample wings, of a beautiful shining colour and smooth, without any hair, and stingless, unless one regards as such the coarser hair-like object growing on their belly, of which, however, they do not make use to inflict a hurt. Some, too, are found of a dusky colour and hairy, of whose disposition you will form an unfavourable opinion judging from their bodily appearance.

As two-fold are the features of the kings,

So are the bodies of their subjects; one

Will gleam with markings rough with gold, and bright

With ruddy scales, and of a comely mien.

That is why this one is especially approved, being superior; for the inferior kind, like dirty spittle, is as foul as

The wayfarer who comes from depth of dust

And from his parched mouth the dirt spits forth:

And as the same writer says,

With sloth inglorious his wide paunch he drags.

Therefore all the leaders of the baser kind

Give them to death, and let the better prince

Rule in the empty hall.

Nevertheless he too must be despoiled of his wings, when he oft-times attempts to break out with his swarm and fly away; for, if we strip him of his wings, we shall keep the vagrant chieftain as though in fetters chained, who, deprived of the resource of flight, ventures not to leave the confines of his realm and, for this reason, does not allow even the people under his sway to wander further than he is able.

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, On Agriculture, trans. E. S. Forster and Edward H. Heffner, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 465-467.

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (4-70 CE)

Historic Beekeeping

A collection of historic documents about bees and beekeeping.

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